What is the oldest hardware you have Linux installed and running on?

LinuxUserSince2013

LinuxUserSince2013

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I have an old machine from 2007. The motherboard is DG965OT Intel. It is currently running Linux Mint 20.3 XFCE as the main OS. I was trying to get Linux Mint 21.3 XFCE to install and run. So far I can install it from the Live Media, but can't get the installed one to boot. Curious I tried, Linux Mint 6 Debian, The live booted up, It installed, but refused to boot at first. I used to Gparted to look at it, and noticed that the boot flag was missing. I put the boot flag on the partition, and tried again. It finally booted. Curious again, I tried, ubuntu-23.10.1-desktop-amd64.iso live, and ubuntu-23.10-desktop-legacy-amd64.iso live. Neither one would boot up into the live version. Seems they are making it harder and harder to get these working on old legacy hardware. Today I am testing out MX Linux 23.1. It booted right up live, and installing it was a breeze. I tried booting into the installed media, and it works perfectly. So MX might be my next OS for that old machine.

*All installs were done with the default settings. That means the installer auto partitioned, and installed to a blank disk.

Anyways that is some history on what prompted me to ask this question.

What is the oldest hardware you got Linux installed on and running. What Distro?
 


I have LMDE on a laptop that's old enough to still have a floppy drive. It runs. I've only used it once, just to see if the 32 bit version would install on it. I'm unsure of the age and I'd have to go find it to get the model number.

It ran but not well. I could open a few tabs in Firefox. I tested YouTube but it stuttered on anything better than potato resolution. The laptop came with XP on it. If I get motivated, I'll dig it out sometime and share the results.

This wasn't that long ago that I installed it. It was sometime within the past five years, I'm pretty sure.

I have a router from the mid 90s (not in use, but not yet recycled) with FreshTomato on it.
 
I had a clear out last year, so my oldest is quite young, it's an ACER travel mate year 2000 currently running MX 32 bit
 
I only have one pc, with a core 2 duo 5400 (underclocked to 900Mhz), 2GB ram. It runs a modified Ubuntu 10.04
 
welinton-paulista said:
core 2 duo 5400
Click to expand...
That will probably be the intel E5400, 1 year older than my laptop which is used daily [when not in my office] in the evenings like now. running Mint LMDE

​

 
My oldest used to be a 2002 Dell Inspiron lappie - P4, with a gig of RAM - running Puppy. It was, shall we say, "sedate"..?

This finally gave up the ghost year before last - dead graphics adapter - so my oldest is now a relatively sprightly 16-yr old from 2008; Dell Latitude, Core2Duo T7250, 4 GB RAM. And a 128 GB SSD.....which some fool had shoehorned Win 10 onto.

Euurghh!!

That got the boot in short order.....and she now dual-boots a pair of Pups.

(Extreme 'Windicide'. So sue me... Lololol!!!) :p


Mike. ;)
 
My 12 year old laptop which is 64bit...if it was 32bit it would be a paper weight because Mint doesn't support 32bit anymore and I don't either.
m1219.gif
 
My backup server is a 2012 Dell Optiplex 790 running Tiny Core linux version 12.0. It was on my to-do list to upgrade it to Tiny Core 14.0 but it looks like 15.0 will be along in a week or several, so I'll just wait a little longer.

Also, I don't think I have a single system with uptime extending back before New Years... Primarily because I got some new furniture for the "data center", tore everything down to re-arrange it all.
 
Better in General Linux, moving this there ;)

Wiz
 
I have an ancient RM tablet PC with stylus and touchscreen from 2000, or thereabouts running an ancient version of Xubuntu.

It has a 32 bit intel x86 pentium mobile processor with something like 486Mb of RAM (it's a very unusual amount). This is actually the maximum supported amount. It has 2 x 256Mb RAM sticks, but for some reason, it can't see all 512Mb that are installed..... Weird!

I installed Xubuntu on it many years ago. But I haven't updated it (or used it) since one of my kids broke the stylus for it. I haven't been able to find a suitable replacement. I have got a bulky docking station for it, so I can also plug in a keyboard and a mouse. But why would I use that when I have two perfectly good laptops?!

And since 32 bit support is almost non-existent nowadays - I might just leave it with whatever old version of xubuntu is already on it. And keep it as a bit of a nostalgic, retro curio.

The version of xubuntu that's currently on it runs like a bit of a dog though. It's also got a very buggy intel graphics chipset. The intel graphics drivers were updated at some point and triggered a hitherto undiscovered flaw in the hardware - resulting in the graphics drivers having to be blacklisted/disabled because they caused the entire system to randomly lock up. Without the graphics card drivers, it has very limited graphical capabilities and anything that requires intense graphics just runs like an absolute dog. A very sad, mangy, lousy, flea-bitten, 3 legged dog that's blind, with no tail. Ha ha!
If I could install a slightly earlier Xubuntu on it, which pre-dates the graphics driver problem - it would probably run a lot more smoothly. With the stylus it was great for drawing and painting digitally using Gimp, Krita and MyPaint. It was also pretty good with Blender too. But obviously - I wouldn't be able to use it online or anything because it would be riddled with historic vulnerabilities and would probably get hacked in a few milliseconds, ha ha!
 
SLAX was the original, Linux designed on a USB drive making it portable. It became obvious that the parts of the object were changeable, and when you change the parts of the object, the software will have to change. Linux has evolved from their portability.
 
redcrazykid said:
SLAX was the original, Linux designed on a USB drive making it portable. It became obvious that the parts of the object were changeable, and when you change the parts of the object, the software will have to change. Linux has evolved from their portability.
Click to expand...
Nah. The first, true 'portable' Linux with built-in persistence - running fully in RAM, & saving back to the same drive it booted from - would have been Knoppix, released back in 2000 by Klaus Knopper. Yes, SLAX got in on the act early, coming out in late 2001/early 2002. My own daily driver, Puppy Linux, appeared around a year later, in June of 2003....


Mike. :p
 
MikeWalsh said:
Nah. The first, true 'portable' Linux with built-in persistence - running fully in RAM, & saving back to the same drive it booted from - would have been Knoppix, released back in 2000 by Klaus Knopper. Yes, SLAX got in on the act early, coming out in late 2001/early 2002. My own daily driver, Puppy Linux, appeared around a year later, in June of 2003....


Mike. :p
Click to expand...
Oh, while I thought you just meant what product did we personally have first. <_<
 
I have a Dell Optiplex 3020 with Linux Mint 20.2 installed on it. I also have Wine installed and use IrfanView and PhoXo on it. The machine came from PCs for people and was donated to me it originally had Windows10.
Always,
Wildman
 
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